page 6

When you sleep in the cold, your dreams are splinters and your head is space.

(uematsu nobuo - ahead on our way (piano))
----- Original Message -----
From: alpha bravo
Date: Saturday, May 19, 2007 11:13 am
Subject: HOLY SHIT
To: K______ Z______

> HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT THIS FUCKING ROAD
> HOLY SHIT
>
> Answer your email!
>
> Holy shit!
>
> 318 corners! I'm still not dead!
> I gotta go do it again!
> I might be here for a while!
>
> Holy shit! I'll tell you all about it later!
>
> Love, joy, and admiration,
> Trying not to die,
> -T.
>
> www.dealsgap.com
> www.tailofthedragon.com
>

On 5/20/07, K______ Z_______ wrote:

Ohohohohmygod you crazycrazy face I'm so glad that you are alive and all that good crap. Oh gee. I'm going back to
T_____. I'll be there tomorrow night. Where are you?
I'm glad you're good. I really am.
-Yay!!

THE TRAINING HAS BEGUN
Hehehe. I'm going to be here for a couple more days, more or less, to keep cranking around these twisties. The Dragon is like the fucking Nurburgring Nordschliefe (Only it loves you LESS!), and there's another 20-30mi of twisties all around it.

I promise I'll come back to you alive.

But being here is different, and everyone here is insane. Including me. I'll tell you all about it when I get back, which hopefully will be around June 1.

Love, joy, and admiration,
and a lot more.
-T.

Looking back, it feels so unreal. Everything that happened yesterday. Wow. But it feels greeeat. The small smile of someone who finds themselves directly in the middle of things. Time to go stick myself into the middle of things.

(uematsu nobuo - fisherman's horizon (piano))
A black butterfly slaps my visor, deflected away by the wind, as I shoot up the Cherohala Skyway. The elevation signs are my cues to swallow and equalize my ears. The air hisses through the foam earplugs. This mountain is high speed, but low forgiveness, I think. But it's also beautiful. You climb this mountain, follow this road, you see some things. I'm learning that T-intersections come with curves, and so do scenic lookouts. There's trees with fat leaves hanging alongside the road so close you could slap your face with them leaning into a corner. Not that I did.

But that reminds me of yesterday, shooting down the south 129 with the Canadiens, leaned into a high-speed sweeper alongside the river, deep in the valley, leaned far enough over that the 12, 16-inch grass whips me in the right bicep and I feel it sting me a little through my jacket. Sweet.

50, 60 miles, though. This mountain is kind of epic. That's pretty much a sprint race right there, and you feel it. Yet I seem to be handling the weight pretty well. This is possibly because my young endocrine HPA junk is pumping the right additives through my veins. The ones that keep you locked down and zoned in.

One thing I've learned that you may or may not think is obvious, is that it doesn't matter how a rider looks or sounds. Yeah, they're all of similar build, these guys on rockets, but you can't tell if that lean, dumb lookin' fuck over there with a cigarette and a leather racing suit with a cowl is the real deal or squid city. But he's still standing, and he's smoking that cigarette down like he's juiced. Who knows.

The Canadiens asked me to check out the 360, so after I pile down the Skyway, I get gas, clean the bugs off my helmet, and hang a right. The 360 is gentle, beautiful, and tight. Farmland, churches, homes. Regular People. Who live here, right here, under the same layer. We're lucky they're easygoing. So it's at least, oh, 10, 30 percent safe to go flying by them on straights if you can get away with it. The double-line, here...

The 360 is Junior's kind of road. But it's got two hard junction turns, one right after some narrow ups and down, and a fast bridge straight over a river, but a stop sign at the end. I might be getting faster--I come up on these Maryland rockets I saw at the gas station. The guy riding sweep is a little nervous in his mirrors, but I behave, following him.

They pull off at the 411 junction, and I wave as I turn onto this four-lane parkway and take off. This road looks like an interstate, but it's somehow in a town area in the middle of nowhere. But this place does confuse me. Nothing is right here, yet it is all pristine splendor. It's...kind of...mad. I can't go on and talk about it too much. You can't think about it too much or you'll have all that static and garbage instead of pure cornering. Don't ask me if it makes any sense, just make sure you're on the inside when you need to be, and the outside when you need to be.

The 72 is a fucking drag strip too. It's got some sweepers, but it opens up onto these two big straights that come in succession. I crank it up to 140, and my face is close enough to the gauges to see them clearly in my peripheral. I've got plenty of straight left, so I squeeze and twist a little more, but there's this strange turbulent wave right on my back. It pushes and pulls up and down, whump-whump-whump-whump-whump. I wonder, would one of those back cowls fix this? My guess is it's caused by the sharp downturn from helmet to spine.

Well, I back it down and make a right to get back onto the speed section before the Dragon...

...I just completed a run from Stecoah, down the 135 to Robbinsville as a warm-up, gas there, the Skyway, gas there, then the 360, the 411 (drag), and a sprint down the 72 back to the 129, then through the Dragon. I'm faster than I was yesterday. I felt a kind of strange twinge somewhere in my mind, or somewhere in the bike, during a deep right, and I backed off. Maybe I'm starting to get a feel for this tire.

I've also discovered I make strange faces in corners, like sticking my tongue out on deep rights. I think it's kinda funny.

I shaved this morning, but there's already stubble on my face. If you asked me how I ride that thing, I wouldn't know what to tell you.

Well, one thing's for sure. I have popped my fucking motorcycle cherry!


...

Check this out. Kids smile when you go by on the freeway on a bike? Well, children fucking -cheer- and raise their arms when you go speeding by in a technical section. Awesome. Their parents must be pissed.

I haven't said it, but it occurred to me to say it while I remember.
Thank -you-, slipper clutch. Because I'm a shit at blipping the throttle. I wouldn't know what to do without you.

...

(uematsu nobuo - shuffle or boogie (piano))
Boy am I glad that cop didn't follow me. I'm covered in sweat. A speed trap at the 28, him looking right at me. Fuuuck. I just put on the throttle and rode like normal (what the fuck?! What does that even mean here?! Okay, I mean, not trying to kill myself).

Life in the Gap seems to come in 15 minute increments of adrenaline. I stop the bike, and it radiates heat. I've been running it from 8500-13000rpm the whole time, and the tail was like a miniature sun behind me after my oil temp hit 195F. I'm amazed the ECU in the tail is insulated enough to run like that.

(uematsu nobuo - besaid island (piano))
I promised you I'd come back alive. You don't know how much that means to me. And instead of it getting me scared or jittery, or turtling up and riding slow,
I ride it through the corners.

...

Fuck. Front brake. Sightsee or corner, asshole. One or the other.

My helmet is even more covered with gnats the second time up the Skyway, and it's only when I stop at the mile-high that I see why. Clouds of the dumbest gnats ever. If you walk around they kill themselves on your body.

You can hear the rumble and howl of the engines in the distance. I walk up to this slightly cooler clearing to sit and think.

I'm doing all this writing, I realize, because someone who cares about me very much needs to hear what my life has been like, lately. I think.
I think because my life has never been the same since then.

The gnats are forcing me out. I'm leaving.

Well, I'm not the dumbest fuck in the world, and I'm certainly not the smartest. I happen to have a suspicion that that title is reserved for you.

I run down the hill, laughing, because I suddenly think of what you said. Crazy face.

I love you.



...

These Triumph 675 riders. They're funny. I told them about the Talladega Nights drinking game I made up, and they did me one better. You gotta drink every time they say 'eh' and 'hoser' in the movie Strange Brew. Well, if someone says 'eh' and 'hoser' once, they're gonna say it FIVE FUCKING MILLION TIMES, and you'll get shoveled.

You will not believe the number of straights next to pristine lakes on this road. And when 360 reaches its climax on a straight you can easily hit 110 on, between two lakes...

Canadiens: I consider you guys one of the big reasons why I'll make it back to the people who want to see me again. Thanks.

(uematsu nobuo - travel agency (piano))
If I'm strong, it's only because I've had chances to -be- strong.

The good make it look effortless. This is why you say, "Look how fast he's going!" instead of "Look at how perfectly he estimated his lean angle to match the line he picked for that turn!"

...

Truth be told, sport bikes are more counter-culture than cruisers.

Cruisers are fuckin' trendy.

Canadiens: I'm leaning it over more every day.

I neglected to mention a few good signs:
--Wait, holy shit, a moped! Wow!

I didn't notice it till the second time, but there's an -extremely- useful sign on the 72, up a hill on a straight, that simply says, "HARD RIGHT -->"

There's a 30mph limit sign when you enter southward the Dragon proper, but the little signs after it are better.
"WARNING: underground cable"
But with the kind of thoughts you might be thinking, it might seem to read:
"WARNING: fucking hairpins"

And just after you pass "the lookout" and cross a bridge, there's a sign that says
"GO HOME"
I kind of want to spray paint "SAFE" under it.

Canadiens: Oh yeah, Mr. REPSOL went down. Last I saw him he was getting trailered out. Thanks again, guys.

...

(uematsu nobuo - tifa's theme (piano))
Sunset to dusk to sunset, from the outside, into the Dragon, up the Hellbender. Lots of things I wish so much I could show you, or even tell you, but I can't. There's not enough space in the flowing part of my mind, of me, for cornering and talking or writing in the flow. I wish I had a bullet cam to tape to my helmet. But my brain just -is- the footage, and I think I've almost memorized the Hellbender by day. I bend around the corners seemingly without moving.

I saw another cop again, going the other way. I dropped my speed, then took off. I don't know if those cops give up, or follow me, then give up, because I can't tell if I'm just imagining their sirens.

You. I miss you.
is what I'm going to say when I see you again. I hope you're in T_____ then.
But I'll go right on to L__ if I have to.

Hanging out with these heavy cruiser guys, makes me almost wish I had an American bike, when I have a house and I take it eas--
What the fuck!? Fuck that! What the fuck was that?!
Twisties!

Well, I guess I like talking to bikers more than I like dinner.

Oh, if it isn't obvious by now, the Gap has a sharp sense of humor. -Sharp.-

So since I missed dinner, I'll ride out to Fontana Village to see if those Triumph guys are awake still.

The lazy bugs flitting around in the late evening dark appear and disappear here and there in the space of my lights, like snowflakes. Reflectors on the road slide and then pop into view, landing lights in the corners.

Riding through at night is an exercise in meditative calmness.

But riding through the reflectorless section is an exercise in telepathy.

I left a note for the Triumph riders and took off. My trip meter was reading close to the edge, but the closest way to gas was back up to the Tail and down the 125 to Robbinsville.

(uematsu nobuo - ending theme (piano))
So I take a slow ride through the night. Stars high, high overhead, through the top of the valley, and lights at times through the trees on the water. I think about all kinds of things while I'm out there, but mostly two things.

I think about how I'm going to leave here in two days, how I'm going to have to come down from this place. This place is Valhalla without the mead that revives you if you die. From here I'll have to look at speed signs and obey them. I'll have to ride like I give a damn--about more than riding.
I will have to come down from this mountain.

But I will always have this, this...
Well, you'll see if you ever come to where I am, here. Out here...

Look, you can see the harbor and the boats...more corners.

I thought about you. How I might get to see you again. I have to tell you, my stomach is a little small for hopes so big. Out here... But I need to have more stones than that. I made a promise and I'll line it up.

I'm just saying I miss you.

...
(uematsu nobuo - rikku's theme (piano))
Carrie, the girl who lives here.
She likes girls, R6s, and has seen more than a few friends die here. She thinks I'm handsome and wishes she knew what to do to get out of this valley, but...it's complicated.

She used to have an R6, but totaled it here. Also totaled her car, but she's sweet, and knows it was dumb stuff, but...it's complicated.

I offered her a short ride, and she'll wear my helmet. I told her she should figure out a thing or two she wanted to do and just go do it, but...it's complicated.

Tomorrow I'll give her a ride, and take it easy,
And it'll be simple.
Even if, especially if I ride slow. Just to give her the feel of the wind in the air, again. This place is full of surprises.

She did tell me that the cops do pursue and do catch, if they are so inclined, and that the Cherohala Skyway brings in a helicopter if they need it.

If I brought that down on me my bike would be impounded and I'd be jailed for 48 hours minimum.

Well, these are the scary stories cops want to have told.

But I was the one she sat down and got nervous in front of, and I can already feel the feeling of being in someone else's skin. The skin of maybe a past me, or a part of me, or a me that wasn't (me). I'll tell her, "Sorry, maybe...in another life," because it's true. She's a sweet girl and I hope that somehow she makes it out to where she finds she wants to go. Living where every madman with two wheels wants to go...

Tell her, why did you let a stranger give you a ride? A stranger who you know is 19, is riding a supersport for his first bike?

Tell her, please, leave this town. Please go out and have a life that is full and grows, instead of one that wears away.

Why does all the serious stuff happen to me?
I just want to be with you.

I love you.

Love, joy, and admiration,
but with a pained twist in my mouth,
-T.

Cameras don't catch the deeper lights in your eyes or mine.